Working with Ethnic Minorities and Across Cultures in Western Child Protection Systems

Pooja Sawrikar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315393124
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Prestazione di assistenza sanitaria

Multiculturalism in Western countries continues to grow, but responsiveness to it with culturally sensitive research, policy and practice has been slower to develop. This lag could be accused of enabling institutional racism – that is, culturally insensitive practices and policies can cause or perpetuate harm to non-mainstream children and families, the very thing that child protection systems are set up to address. Thus, it is critical that the field has a resource that clearly and comprehensively outlines the characteristics of cultural competency in the child protection system when working with ethnic minorities and across both mainstream and non-mainstream cultures, so as to equally protect the safety of all children. Unlike previous research, this book addresses discrete and relevant practice issues - how to work effectively with interpreters, whether or not to match caseworkers and clients based on ethnic background and what to consider when making plans for children in the out-of-home-care (OOHC) system - with best practice guidelines. This book will be required reading for all social work students, academics and practitioners whose work engages with issues of cultural competency.

Part I

Setting the scene

1 Defining and understanding the client group

Who are ethnic minorities and what do they characteristically have in common?

Definitive characteristics of ethnic minorities

Getting the terminology right

Ethnic minorities go by many names in the literature. Sometimes they are referred to as the ‘culturally and linguistically diverse’ (CALD) and sometimes they are referred to as those of ‘non-English speaking background’ (NESB¹). NESB was once the most common term used, but was superseded in the 1990s by CALD because NESB had come to have negative connotations; it was now code for ‘the different other’, and was limited in explaining the dimensions on which this group differed from the majority, which were not just along linguistic lines (Australian Bureau of Statistics; ABS, 2001).

At the time, CALD was seen as superior to NESB because it now drew attention to the fact that this group differs from the mainstream in both language and culture, and in celebrating the diversity among ethnic minorities, it was thought to be less subject to the criticism of referring to the non-mainstream. However, CALD and NESB are synonymous terms and so there was no escaping this issue: CALD still referred to people and groups that were not white and English speaking. If anything, it was worse than NESB, being covert or not transparent about the fact that it was actually differentiating groups that were culturally and linguistically different from the majority.

Moreover, CALD can be used not just in a categorical way to identify a sub-group of the population, but in a functional way to describe a (national) community as culturally and linguistically diverse, making the definition unstable and a term of convenience as to whom it wishes to include or exclude according to its end goal. In the main, it is used in a categorical way, thereby excluding the white English-speaking majority as if their culture and language were not sufficiently diverse to ‘make the cut’.

For all these reasons, CALD is not the preferred term in this book and ‘ethnic minority’ is.² Ethnicity is a term that encompasses four key and relevant dimensions (O’Hagan, 1999) along which minorities typically face judgement for being different from the Anglo Saxon/Celtic, individualistic, English-speaking and/or Christian majority in Western countries:

• Race³

• Culture

• Language

• Religion.

That the terms NESB and CALD are synonymous indicates that language is a foremost demarcation of these groups from the English-speaking mainstream, and culture is indeed a critical variable that needed to be included, but in focusing on language and culture, CALD is not able to address racial barriers that ethnic minorities face. For example, migrants of German, Dutch or Irish ancestry differ from the mainstream in Western countries in language and culture but are not visibly different. They do not have brown skin, non-Caucasoid features or wear a hijab. Such visible markers of ethnicity mean that their barriers are sizeably less than their non-white counterparts. The term ‘CALD’ groups all of these together with the overall effect of masking the size of disadvantage for some ethnic minority groups compared to others (Sawrikar and Katz, 2009). By including race (and religion), which the term ‘ethnicity’ does, racial barriers – that is to say, racism and discrimination – are not at risk of being minimised.

Examples of good and poor practice 1.1 –
Language and cultural safety

We had a bit of problem [with DoCS]. Because we are Muslim, they were asking us how it was going to affect the child if we spoke [a] different language. [FAM_Maori]

[Anglo caseworker] told me ‘speak Spanish. She has to learn Spanish. She can learn English when she start school’. That was something very nice he said. They want the kids to learn our culture. [FAM_Argentinian]

It’s very interesting, as an Anglo person, coming into this organisation. It’s been a very cultural experience. I’ve loved it. It’s really exciting what you can learn. When we were training, they encouraged us, ‘learn anything about the language of the people you deal with’. One time, it was an attempted murder situation on the [Vietnamese] mother and child. It was really serious at the hospital. I decided to say my [Vietnamese] ‘goodbye’. I don’t know what I said, but it brought tears to their eyes. They laughed and laughed! Culturally sensitive? I don’t know?! [CW_Anglo]

It seems that human nature cannot help but see race, and has a strong propensity to attribute differences between groups to it, whether or not it is accurate. As an example, Indigenous children are substantially over-represented in the NSW child protection system at 25 per cent (Sawrikar, 2009), when their representation in the general population of NSW is only 2.2 per cent and in all of Australia only 2.5 per cent (ABS, 2006a, 2006b). This finding is not unique; ‘the treatment of Indigenous children by the child welfare system reflects systematic racial bias right across the western world’ (Barber et al., 2000, p. 5).

What could possibly cause such gross over-representation if not, at some level, issues with the child protection system that assess these families and communities? No ethnic group is ten times more abusive than any other, for example. Perpetrators of child maltreatment come from ‘all walks of life. Those who abuse children cannot be defined by race, class, religion or social status’ (Sinclair, 1995, p. 160), and cultural norms make some things more or less acceptable in one group compared to another leading to over-representation in some forms of maltreatment among some ethnic groups, and some groups are at higher risk of maltreatment because of their higher exposure to risk factors like poverty (Bartholet, 2009), but this does not mean that Aboriginals are grossly abusive and neglectful of their children. To think this, is racist. It is a cognitively ‘easy’, and more importantly, risky, interpretation of the statistics. Instead, the large over-representation is indicative of injustice in the distribution of social, cultural, political and economic power (Fraser, 2005), and a historical effect where children removed and not parented by their own families are at risk of losing parenting skills across generations (see Chapter 2). To not be held accountable for such false inferences and attributions of maltreatment is to minimise discussions of racism. It is also a direct threat to the well-being of Aboriginal (and all) children.

Australian governments have also, more recently, intervened in these communities on the grounds that these statistics are evidence of high abuse. The ‘Northern Territory (NT) Intervention’ in 2007 was deemed necessary to protect Aboriginal children from the high sexual abuse and family violence in their communities. Yet, no such intervention has been carried out on Anglo families, and the data in this study – albeit small in sample size – preliminarily shows that the rate of reported sexual abuse and domestic violence is equally high in these two groups (see Chapters 4 and 5). Thus, the over-representation of Aboriginal children in the child protection system for sexual abuse (in particular) was seen by the government as evidence that ‘ethnicity’ was a predictor of sexual abuse.

Australia had clearly not learned from its mistakes of the past (‘the Stolen Generations’, see Chapter 2). That is, race (or culture or ethnicity, here acceptably synonymous) was seen to be the primary cause of sexual abuse, but of course, race was not openly named as the cause. Instead, culture was, perhaps even ‘a culture of silence’ (see Chapter 5). However, a culture of silence surrounds sexual abuse in all groups, so it was not really a non-racialised culture to which the abuse was being attributed; it was squarely a racialised culture that was being targeted, pathologising Aboriginal culture as if it were the root cause of the problem.

No doubt sexual abuse was occurring, and no doubt intervention was necessary to protect children in those communities, but if for this group then also for Anglos since rates seem equally high for both groups; child safety should be equally implemented across racial groups or it is simply racism. It is well established that sexual abuse is not condoned in any culture; it is not seen anywhere as normal, acceptable or of value. Thus, intervention along racial lines is racist (as the NT intervention was) and highlights how racism is at strong risk of being minimised if terminology does not allow for its inclusion and discussion. To prevent making such grave racist errors (over and over), it is critical that culture along racial/ethnic lines be defined if it is going to take any blame for abuse and neglect.

What is culture and where does collectivism fit?

Culture is a difficult word to define:

Culture is that somewhat amorphous but quintessentially human orientation to life that allows us to interpret and give meaning to the social life around us. Culture is constantly changing defying easy definitions or the construction of a library-like catalogue of behaviors and values and instead demanding finely nuanced contextual understandings.

(Korbin, 2008, p. 122)

Despite this difficulty, the word ‘culture’ at some fundamental level refers here to any time-honoured tradition passed from one generation to the next that is normal, acceptable and/or of value. Thus, there are many ‘cultures’; there may be an ‘Australian culture’, an ‘American culture’ or an ‘English culture’, and there can also be a ‘drinking culture’, a ‘stiff upper lip culture’ and a ‘tall poppy culture’.

Really, these cultures are just generalisations – stereotypes – that have emerged from normative trends and so have ‘truth’ embedded in them. Moreover, stereotypes are not inherently bad and should not be seen as ‘a dirty word’. Stereotypes are adaptively useful and have evolved because they are cognitively efficient, buying us precious time when we think about our world in increasingly time-poor conditions. Stereotypes are only destructive when the beliefs that comprise them are untrue, negative and/or used to prejudge all members of a group. (Indeed, prejudice means to ‘pre-judge’, derived from the Latin prae judicium; Vaughan and Hogg, 2002.)

This means that if we are going to talk about ‘racialised culture’, or culture along racial/ethnic lines, then we are going to need stereotypes; we just need to be careful not to use wrong or negative ones or at all times. We need to use them with vigilance, ensuring that the beliefs comprising the stereotypes are accurate, do not perpetuate harm or disadvantage to groups and are questioned when applied to individuals. In the context of child protection, we also need to choose a stereotype that is relevant, appropriate and meaningful to a discussion on how ethnic minorities fare in Western child protection systems. To this end, the dichotomy between collectivism and individualism has been selected, consistent with other seminal researchers in the field (e.g. Maitra, 2005; Shalhoub-Kevorkian, 2005; Al-Krenawi and Graham, 2001; Hesketh et al., 2000; Owusu-Bempah, 1999).

Overall, collectivism occurs in cultures that see the family to be the basic unit of society, and individualism occurs in cultures that see the individual to be the basic unit of society (Hofstede, 1980, 2001). More specifically, individualistic cultures value independence, autonomy, initiative and uniqueness, emphasise that individuals have the right and responsibility to look after themselves, stress horizontal relationships based on equality and tolerate deviations from the norm to a greater extent (Bond, 2002; Triandis, 1990). Thus, the concept of self is defined as separate and independent from the group, people define themselves in terms of individual attributes, the interests of the individual are given priority, the pursuit of fulfilment of individual goals is expected, behaviour is explained in terms of individual decisions and attributes, accumulation of individual wealth and possessions is the norm, and self-reliance, leadership, competitiveness, aggression and achievement are normal, rewarded and admired (Burton et al., 2015).

Contrarily, collective cultures value social order, harmony, support and roles. In collective cultures the family provides security in exchange for loyalty and obedience, inequality (usually based on age and gender) is seen as appropriate and acceptable, and members tend to be more homogenous, as deviations from the norm are not tolerated as greatly (Bond, 2002; Triandis, 1990). Thus, the concept of self is defined only in relation to the group, people define themselves in terms of group attributes, the interests of the group are given priority, the interdependence and solidarity of people within the group are emphasised, the pursuit of group happiness and harmony are expected, behaviour is explained in terms of adherence to group norms, collective ownership of resources is the norm, and group conformity, obligation, sense of duty, collective responsibility and group/community-orientated achievement are normal, rewarded and admired (Burton et al., 2015).

As they are stereotypes, it is important to point out that individuals are still of value in collective societies and family is still of value in individualistic societies. Thus, while there is truth to them and they are useful for making sense of our so...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Common abbreviations
• Introduction: what is in this book and who should use it
• Methodology: the study on which this book is based
• Part I Setting the scene
• Part II Practice issues
• Part III Wrapping up
• References
• Index